Veronica Davis traces the inspiration for her all-female, African American bike club to a morning in 2011 when she pedaled past a public housing project in Southeast Washington, D.C. Co-owner of an environmental-sustainability consulting firm called Nspiregreen, Davis was taking a shortcut on her daily bike commute when she overheard a young black girl shouting to her mother, “Mommy, mommy, it’s a black lady on a bike!”

“At first, I didn’t understand why she was so excited,” says Davis. The 34-year-old civil engineer had started bike commuting about a year earlier, shortly after launching her business, partly to save money as the start-up got off the ground. “And then later, thinking about it, I realized I was probably the first cyclist riding down her street that looked like her.”

That experience led to a conversation among friends, which led to a Facebook group, Black Women Bike D.C., which exploded after a story in theWashington Post. Davis says she knew more African American women were bicycling in the District of Columbia — “I saw them” — but sensed they weren’t linked together in any type of community.

Her vision for the group was simple: to broaden the idea of who is a bicyclist to include more than just Lycra-clad weekend warriors in 20 miles-per-hour pacelines, and encourage black women and girls to ride their bikes for fun, health, wellness, and transportation. Today, more than 1,100 strong, Black Women Bike D.C. is more than just a cycling club, Davis says. It’s “a movement.”

The group organizes monthly rides as well as clinics on bike commuting, repair, and purchase, and builds community through events, a blog, and social media. It’s for mothers who want to join their children on neighborhood rides, women training for their first sprint triathlon, and everyday commuters like Davis.

Davis says D.C.’s massive bike-sharing system, along with other infrastructure efforts including green lanes and a bike lane right down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, have helped boost minority riding in the city. Critically, Capital Bikeshare continues to expand geographically outside its downtown base and is now up to more than 200 stations. The service recently surpassed 5 million trips.

Davis also notes, in all seriousness, that the increase in black women bicycling in the nation’s capital happens to coincide with a welcome change in African American hair fashion. “Two decades ago in D.C., black women were using and spending money on chemical straighteners in their hair and they weren’t about to sweat that out,” she says. “There’s been a move toward more natural hair styles and that’s part of what’s made this possible.”

Today, Davis says, preventing helmet hair is all about having the right satin scarf. “You can’t underestimate the importance of hair care when talking about women and bicycling,” she says with a laugh.

Black Women Bike D.C. is among a host of bicycling clubs popping up around the country aimed at getting people of color out riding. There’s the National Brotherhood of Cyclists, the Pittsburgh Mayor Taylor Cycling Club (which hosts weekly rides out of the Over The Bar bicycle café in Southside), We Bike NYC, and in Los Angeles, both the Ciudad de Luces/City of Lights and the all-female, Latina Ovarian Psyco Cycles Brigade. Others, like the three-decade-old Baltimore Metro Wheelers, have been around longer.

In fact, the percent of all trips taken by bike by African Americans grew 100 percent between 2001-2009, according to a report released this spring by the League of American Bicyclist and the Sierra Club. Similarly, the percent of all trips taken by bike by Asian Americans grew 80 percent, and by half for Latino Americans over the same time period.

Granted, whites made up a larger share of bicyclists, and the percentage of all trips taken by white bicyclists also grew — 22 percent by comparison. Still, overall, the percentage of all bicycle trips in the U.S. from those African, Asian, and Latino groups bounced from 16 to 23 percent.

Remember when the famously snarky blog Stuff White People Like listed bicycling at No. 61 a few years ago — between the Toyota Prius and “knowing what’s best for poor people”? Sorry guys, but the stereotype was already outdated.

More survey results: 86 percent of people of color have a positive view of bicyclists and 71 percent of people of color believe safer bicycling would make their community better.

Which is not to say big challenges don’t remain. While many communities are enjoying new opportunities because of the boom in bicycling, safety obstacles persist in many underserved neighborhoods. According to 2001 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to white bicyclists, the fatality rate was 23 percent higher for Hispanic and 30 percent higher for African American riders.

“Bicycling and bicycling infrastructure is an economic/social justice issue,” says Carolyn Szczepanski, the League of American Bicyclists’ communication director. “It’s really a very complex issue and this report is really a first stab at starting the conversation.

“I do think that minority bicyclists have been undercounted in the past,” she adds, “but there’s also a definite trend in the number of African Americans and Latinos bicycling. We need to rethink who a bicyclist is.”

For Veronica Davis, bicycling still very much remains a pragmatic form of transportation. She doesn’t ever see herself doing century rides, for example — “I don’t enjoy riding in the country or on trails, to be honest,” she says. “I like urban biking, seeing D.C. by bike.”

She also likes the message she sends to people she passes by, like the little girl who shouted to her mom. “I used it [the public housing project] as a cut-through, and I looked like that girl,” Davis says. “And maybe that plants the seed — ‘This is something I could do.’”

]]>dc-bike-club-hpblack women bike clubblack-women-bikeBike Party — a fresh new way to take back the streetshttps://grist.org/cities/bike-party-a-fresh-new-way-to-take-back-the-streets/
Fri, 03 May 2013 11:07:23 +0000http://grist.org/?p=173754O’Doherty Photography

As with all great parties, I heard Friday night’s bike fiesta before I found it. Pedaling my old-school aluminum Trek road bike up one of Baltimore’s main drags — in a black bow tie, ruffled shirt, and cummerbund, naturally — I suddenly caught Whitney Houston’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” blasting from a nearby park. And then, up the hill a little further, I saw the 20-, 30-, and, yes, 40-something couples in retro tuxes, chiffon and satin gowns, with flowers in their lapels and corsages on their wrists, posing for pictures next to decorated bicycles.

There were even women with tiaras atop their helmets. One friend managed to dangle a sparkling disco ball off the front of her handlebars — lit by her bicycle light once we started riding and the sun went down. Close to 1,000 people in all. Not everyone, but most, dressed to the nines for that once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

Welcome to Bike Party: Bike Prom edition, part of a burgeoning movement nationwide that is putting the fun into bicycling activism.

Last April, the traditional, anarchy-inspired Critical Mass rides here evolved (how long can something be both traditional and anarchist?) into the newer, safer, more traffic-friendly — and happier — last-Friday-of-every-month Baltimore Bike Party. Critical Mass rides, for the unfamiliar, date back two decades and have taken place in cities all over the world. They are historically political, punk, and confrontational in manner.

Bike Party, by contrast, is gentle, ’60s-style protest/celebration. It’s theater, activism, bicycling, and social gathering all at once. Or, as I overheard one woman tell a girlfriend on a ride: “It’s like everything I love rolled into one … and it’s going out on Friday night to a great party.”

The rides are basically inclusive, 12-mile, recreational-speed cruises around Baltimore’s core downtown neighborhoods, including many neglected by the city and bypassed by other events. As a bonus, there’s always an awesome, eclectic soundtrack. Organizers launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year to pay for a kickin’ all-directional sound system that gets pulled along on a bike trailer in the middle of the action.

And, of course, there’s after-Bike-Party parties each month at a local bar. The monthly route gets shared with police, who occasionally help block traffic, but otherwise, it’s all very informal.

The Bike Party concept was apparently first launched in San José, Calif., where Baltimore organizer Tim Barnett, a Maryland Zoo zoologist by trade, says he got the idea to create a similar version in his adopted hometown.

Barnett, who was active in Baltimore’s Critical Mass rides, says he stumbled across San José Bike Party on the web while trying to find ways to attract more riders. He’d learned through social media outreach that Baltimore bicyclists wanted something more organized than the “leaderless” Critical Mass rides. And, he figured out, it needed to be fun — joyful even — if people were going to forego Friday night happy hour and participate.

“One thing people always said was, ‘I want to come [to the Critical Mass ride], but, you know, I’ve got this other thing to do,’” says Barnett, who doesn’t drive a car and says his motivation in organizing Bike Party is to help make bicycling a more acceptable, practical form of transportation in the city. “I wanted this ride to be the thing people did on their Friday nights.”

San José Bike Party volunteer Katie Heaney told the San José State University college newspaper that the group has been garnering more people each month since its formation in 2007. Many of the original riders of the group, she said, filtered through other bike party groups, such as Critical Mass in San Francisco and Midnite Ridazz in Los Angeles. On Facebook, the San José Bike Party now has nearly 14,000 “friends.” In March, they organized a Jedi-themed Star Wars ride, and late last year, attracted 3,500 riders to their fifth anniversary ride.

In 2011, San Francisco created its own popular Bike Party, followed by nearby East Bay and Peninsula Bike Parties in northern California. (There’s also Fresno Bike Party, Salinas Bike Party, etc.) Traverse City, Mich., and Philadelphia also recently gave birth to monthly Bike Party projects, as did Washington, D.C. A glance around the internet uncovered a Johnson City, Tenn., Bike Party, whose motto — “The Revolution Will Not be Motorized” — you gotta love. And, get this, there’s also Bike Party Seoul and Bike Party Changwon in South Korea, and Bike Party Sao Paulo in Brazil, too.

The Washington, D.C., Bike Party still has yet to capture the city’s imagination like Baltimore Bike Party has, perhaps unexpectedly to those who know the city only through The Wire. (The monthly rides in D.C., held since last July, attract about 400 riders a month.) But Baltimore Bike Party is merging bicycle commuters, recreational cyclists, and bike advoates, as well as the art and green communities, into a moving monthly parade that’s also moving city officials to pay attention to the burgeoning alternative transportation community here.

April’s ride, for example, was also associated with Baltimore Green Week, which hosted daily events in the week around Earth Day, including several bike rides. Next month, Barnett said, Bike Party will partner with the Station North Arts & Entertainment District on their May Final Fridays event. And in June, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is expected to join Bike Party as it partners with the west side Bromo Tower Arts & Entertainment District.

The pure, mad joy of bicycling in costume with adventurous friends, literally filling a dozen blocks of Baltimore streets on a Friday night, is almost impossible to capture in words and photos. However, the absolute best part of any Baltimore Bike Party is the reaction along the route. More taxi, truck, delivery, and automobile drivers honk and toot in support than you’d think. But better are the diverse group of kids, teenagers, and adults in every neighborhood, east to west, north to south, who leave their rowhouses, come off their porches, step out of the corner bars and restaurants, stop whatever they’re doing to high-five Bike Party bicyclists, and shout encouragement — and often, shoot cellphone pictures and videos.

Young kids sprint and roller-skate on sidewalks to keep pace. Older kids jump on their BMX bikes and join in. Families wave from their windows. And some of these streets half-consist of boarded up, vacant houses. From one little boy with his sisters and mom during Bike Prom: “They wearin’ prom dresses! They’re SO beautiful.”

It’s also interesting to listen to Baltimore Bike Party riders themselves as they pedal. The bicycling culture in Charm City and the Bike Party — a year old — seems to be growing so fast now that it’s almost hard to grasp at times.

I actually heard another guy at a rest stop say, “I’ve been waiting for a bike ride like this my whole life.” He was probably in his mid-20s, but still.

I heard another cyclist ask, out loud, “How is it possible that this is the most fun thing I’ve ever done?”

I figure that sentiment has to bode well for the future of bicycling in Baltimore. Elsewhere, too.

In 1983, with the encouragement and support of iconic landscape photographer Ansel Adams, Susan Shaw wrote Overexposure, a research book on the dangers of photographic chemicals. With an M.F.A. from Columbia University already in hand, she completed a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from Columbia’s School of Public Health. She was among the first researchers to document and study the presence of perfluorinated chemicals, flame retardants, and cancer-causing chemicals — many found in consumer products — in the tissue of harbor seals and marine fishes.

Shaw is the founder and director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Blue Hill, Maine, and a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the State University of New York in Albany. A well-known figure in the fight against ocean pollution, she has provided commentary in several documentary films on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, including Animal Planet’s Black Tide: Voices of the Gulf and Green Planet’s The Big Fix, which was an official selection documentary at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Last year, the Society of Women Geographers named Shaw its Gold Medal Award recipient, the organization’s highest honor, first given to Amelia Earhart in 1933.

Q.Ansel Adams approached you when you were a photographer/filmmaker and in graduate school about a research project around the dangers of photographic chemicals, correct?

A. I called Kodak in Rochester — it was like going into the castle — I told them I was doing a student project. I was able to talk to a toxicologist, and he opened up his file drawer and taught me a lot about the chemical ingredients, which they were not releasing at the time, especially the color chemicals, so I got access to the formulas and I was able to figure out what the real hazards were. When they actually figured out that I was writing this book, they never really let me in there again. But I did get information that companies are allowed to keep as trade secrets. That’s one of the problems we have today with toxic chemicals and with companies controlling our exposure to them.

Q.Can you describe the potential problems around chemicals and processes listed as trade secrets?

A. Trade secrets are one loophole that companies use to produce chemicals and market them without telling the public even what is in the formulation, let alone telling them what the hazards are. And that’s the way our federal law regulates toxic chemicals — it’s the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976. This has just been an ongoing battle for decades. There are 80,000 chemicals or more in use and only a small fraction of those, maybe 20 percent, are even put on a list for testing.

Q.Some of your recent work has been around the chemicals that were used to break up the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico. What can you tell us about that?

A. We allowed BP to use 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants on the oil spill, which was unprecedented. To inject that much dispersant — or any amount of dispersant in water that deep, a mile deep, at the wellhead, had never been done before … making that a chemical experiment.

Q.You actually dove into an oil slick with a wetsuit and snorkel.

A. It was frightening. I didn’t know what to expect going down. In the water I started to see the break up of the oil and then I started to see a lot of dead animals in the water. It was rather horrifying.

Q.You’ve done a lot of work around harbor seals and toxic chemicals found in their tissue. Why do you point to seals as a “sentinel,” an indicator of what’s happening to the marine ecosystem?

A. Why are they sentinels? Because seals are at the top of the food web, like we are; they are eating fish like we do, so they are exposed in a similar way through food. They are bio-accumulating persistent compounds, organic chemicals like PCBs and DDT, and now flame retardants. The animals at the top [of the food web] are getting the highest dose because at each level of the food web the chemicals are building up in tissue, and then the next up — like from a fish to a seal — the levels jump up a thousand fold.

Q.The New England coast last year saw a significant harbor seal die-off. How often do events like this occur?

A. There have been hundreds of huge die-offs among seals and dolphins since the 1980s. There has been a die-off of dolphins, more than 600, in the Gulf of Mexico after the oil spill. Half of them were newborn or stillborn, meaning that something was impairing the reproductive ability of the mother dolphin. And that die-off is still going on. They [the dolphins] are so polluted that they are considered hazardous waste when they come up on beaches — that’s an EPA designation based on levels just of PCBs alone in the tissue.

These are what are referred to as “signal” wildlife events. If you think about it, this is what Rachel Carson was talking about with DDT. The birds were just literally falling out of the sky, and why? It’s not that we were spraying the birds; we were spraying their foods, the lawns, and on the land.

Q.After the Gulf spill, however, things don’t seem to have changed much, in terms of drilling and oil exploration.

A. I was hoping the Gulf oil spill would be a huge wake-up call, but actually we are going deeper into offshore drilling and waiting for the next one to happen.

]]>susan shawsusan shawWhat are we made of? One word: Plasticshttps://grist.org/living/2011-12-07-what-are-we-made-of-one-word-plastics/
https://grist.org/living/2011-12-07-what-are-we-made-of-one-word-plastics/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2011 02:20:27 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-12-07-what-are-we-made-of-one-word-plastics/This story originally appeared in Urbanite.

In What’s Gotten Into Us? Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, McKay Jenkins sounds an alarm on the chemicals that we unknowingly ingest and inhale daily.Photo: J.M. GiordanoAfter the discovery of a tumor near his hip, McKay Jenkins, married, father of two, began investigating the manufacturing and consumer use of synthetic chemicals, particularly those in everyday products such as plastic bottles, cosmetics, toys, carpets, and cell phones. His search eventually lead to a book, published by Random House in April, called What’s Gotten Into Us? Staying Healthy in a Toxic World.

Jenkins, a professor of English and journalism at the University of Delaware, says he wanted What’s Gotten Into Us? to be similar to Michael Pollan’s book The Ominivore’s Dilemma: “The book sets out to open people’s eyes about the connection of many consumer products to their health, the environment, workers’ rights,” he says.

“Flame retardants are found in women’s breast tissue; hormone disrupters in the drinking water,” he says. And although it is impossible to conclude directly, they are likely linked to increasing rates of some cancers, reproductive problems, learning disabilities, and other health issues.

We asked Jenkins what he thinks we ought to know, and what’s being done about it.

Q. Jumping off the page early in What’s Gotten Into Us? are the references to body-burden studies, where researchers test people’s bodies for the presence of synthetic chemicals such as plasticizers, pesticides, and flame retardants.

A. There are a variety of different groups — some are environmental groups with a legislative agenda, others interested in science and policy — that hire outside researchers. So I decided to go to Maine where some of this work was being done. People submit blood, hair, and urine. The evidence points to the ubiquity of these chemicals, not in laboratories, rivers, or lab rats, but literally, they find them in people.

Other studies have found them in wild animals, the breast tissue of Beluga whales, atop of South American mountains, and in the bodies of the Inuit in the Arctic Circle. The wind literally blows [synthetic chemicals] around the world. They don’t go away.

Q. Many of those who tested positive in the Maine study grew up in remote, rural areas. On average, you report, participants harbored 36 toxic chemicals, including traces of chemicals used to make Teflon and Scotchgard treatments. The body-burden studies themselves are a new tactic, correct?

A. Calling [the spread of these chemicals] an environmental issue has not gotten traction. Calling it a health issue has not been effective. Calling it a health issue that affects kids — that works. The political driver tends to be moms because it’s not just their own health, but also the health of their kids, for women of childbearing age.

Q. What about federal studies?

A. The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has ongoing national studies. They can be aggravatingly non-political. They’ll note the existence of certain chemicals, but don’t say, “Therefore, we should ban it.” And industry exploits that.

Q. Was the discovery that Bisphenol-A (BPA) was leeching from reusable, environmentally righteous Nalgene bottles a canary-in-the-coal-mine moment?

A. It’s interesting. Out of the thousands of chemicals that may harm people, why would it be that BPA popped to the surface [of media attention]? Was it that BPA was also used for things like baby bottles and heated liquids caused it to leech faster? “Oh god, the heated bottle on the stove in middle of the night? I might be giving hormone disrupting chemicals to a baby.” That’s a resonant image.

What about stain resistant carpeting? Why not that? And BPA is still being used, just not in baby products. The chemical industry wants chemicals regulated chemical-by-chemical, state-by-state, for babies, not for babies, for adults, not for adults. They don’t give in. It’s inch by inch.

Q. You also write about pesticides, petrochemicals, and pharmaceuticals — traces of everything from anti-depressants to Viagra — entering the water supply.

A. The water treatment systems we have in place are not technologically advanced enough to address the problems we have. We’re used to dumping a bunch of chlorine in there. On the East Coast [treatment plants] were built 150 years ago to combat cholera and dysentery, which they do well … [But] these contaminants can’t be killed.

Q. As part of the research, you invited a Johns Hopkins toxicologist into your home for a walk-through. What did he suggest removing?

A. The biggest problem was the old lacquer, paint cans, and sealants we had in the basement for the past six years after remodeling. We never had Teflon pans; we use steel pans with olive oil. Definitely not wall-to-wall carpeting.

The biggest change for me was the lawn — replacing about 20 percent of the grass with native plants, trees, and bushes. Pesticide users destroy the bird population. We planted blueberry bushes, black-eyed Susans, milkweed, butterfly weed. Eventually, we had gold finches, multiple species of butterflies, humming birds coming around. What was interesting, too, is that then kids in the neighborhood started coming over to see what was happening.

Q. What’s been the reaction to the book?

A. There have been two for the most part. “God, I don’t want to read that,” has been one of the strongest reactions, and something we’ve had to overcome in marketing the book. Consciously, people don’t want to know what chemicals are being used in their cosmetics, green lawns, microwave popcorn …

The second-biggest reaction has been, they want simple answers and an appendix with 3,700 things to do. There is an appendix, but what I was interested in is why and how we got to this place. There are 50 million acres — the size of Nebraska — of lawn in this country. How did this come about? How did it come to be that our houses had to smell like lavender or apple pie? Rather than baking an apple pie, a company will sell you a synthetic spray that smells like apple pie.

Q. As a journalist and someone pretty deeply involved in environmental issues, what surprised you most during the research?

A. Of all the things I became aware of, the absence of reasonable oversight in these areas — not being accountable — is the biggest takeaway. This is a very intentional effort by industry, very deliberate. They are constantly trying to get regulations cut, get agencies’ budgets cut, and it becomes very frustrating …

In Europe, they’re taking a different approach. Their primary concern is public health. In Europe, chemicals are guilty until proven innocent. In the U.S., it’s the opposite. Companies are creating products faster than our ability to assess them.